YouTube is filtering videos, why not an audio search engine?

Changes at YouTube started. The video community site is adding an audio-signature technology to detect copyright material, reports AP.

YouTube technology will scan digital audio files, and compare the electronic fingerprints to databases of copyright material. But the company stressed that it’s going to roll out a DIY filtering system. Copyright owners will have “to identify their content, locate it and then make a decision based on whether they want to remove it,” as said a YouTube spokeswoman.

With the huge video database that YouTube hosts, we wonder if this so-called filtering system could lead to another system: An audio-enable video search. Channel 11 has being experimenting such a voice search on their website (the search box in the middle of the front page). It relies on 40 phonemes that exist in every language.